A promise is a promise.  But what if your career takes off right when your life takes over?

Artist Beverly McIver was enjoying a skyrocketing career as a painter when a casual yet life-changing promise made to her mother Ethel years before – to take care of her mentally disabled sister Renee – came due. RAISING RENEE follows the McIver family from the time when Ethel and Renee shared a home in Greensboro, NC, through Ethel’s illness and death, to the pivotal moment in 2004 when Beverly brought Renee to live with her in Phoenix, Arizona. The film chronicles Beverly’s promise to “raise” her sister, a 43-year-old woman who functions at the level of a third grader, and the way it transforms Beverly’s life at a time when she had hoped to focus on her burgeoning career and on finding a life partner. Raising Renee unfolds with humor, drama and unexpected twists, and provides a deeply intimate view of a unique family of women, the tenacity of family bonds, and the power of art to transform experience into something beyond words.

Filmed over the course of six years, the documentary RAISING RENEE premieres on HBO2 on February 22nd.

Academy Award nominated husband and wife filmmaking team Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan have been making documentary and fiction films for over 20 years and RAISING RENEE is the third in their Family Trilogy, including “Troublesome Creek” and “So Much So Fast.”  “Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern,” won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance, the Prix Italia, Peabody and IDA awards, and an Academy Award® nomination. Previously, “So Much So Fast” premiered at Sundance and was broadcast worldwide, including a special presentation on PBS’ “Frontline.”

For the past decade, Gabriela has worked as an international model and brand ambassador. Throughout her wildly successful career she has landed several TV jobs in Europe, USA, and South America, appeared in countless international campaigns, and has been the centerpiece of editorials in top fashion and lifestyle publications around the globe. More recently, Gabriela Dias has launched a Brazilian swimwear line, under the label G. Dias, for which she is the sole designer.

Terje Carlsson is a freelance journalist.  He has spent almost a decade covering the Middle East for the news media including Swedish Television and Radio.  He had thought about making a movie about Israel peace activists.  Carlsson felt their work was very important, and he was impressed with their commitment to this cause.  They risk injury and even death in their work.  These activists’ beliefs are shared by a minority of the Israeli population.  They are condemned by those with opposing views including members of their friends and family.  Terje felt it was important for their story to be told.

Terje Carlsson filmed a documentary about a 17 year old teenager, Leila, living in Hebron in 2006 and 2007.  This critically acclaimed documentary “Welcome to Hebron” was released in 2008.  Because of the film’s great success, Swedish TV wanted Terje to make another film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   He told them about the work of Israeli peace activists and “Israel vs. Israel” born.

Carlsson began researching various Israeli peace groups.  He was already familiar with Jonathan Pollack whom he met In 2003 at a very violent demonstration against the construction of the wall.  He was also very familiar with Arik Ascherman and Yehuda Shaul, and admired their work.  He also decided to work with Ronny Perlman because she was a woman and a holocaust survivor. Each of them has a different focus and background, yet they all oppose the military occupation in the West Bank and want more humane treatment for the Palestinians.  Israel consists of Jewish people with a great variety of backgrounds and expectations.  He wanted this diversity in the peace movement film where one finds middleclass women and young anarchists, religious rabbis and recent secular arrivals from New York, Kiev or Teheran to be reflected in the film.
Terje Carlsson started shooting the film in the autumn of 2008.  In the beginning he worked on a daily basis filming the olive harvest, protests against the wall and the interaction at different checkpoints. Shortly thereafter in December 2008, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip.  He was working around the clock in order to keep up with all the anti-war activities that were going on in Israel and in the West Bank.  Carlsson essentially filmed the documentary by himself.  He was a one man crew; he shot the footage and sound.  He handled the research and conducted all the interviews himself.  The film was shot over a 2 year period.  Often times filming was very difficult and dangerous.  Sometimes he was threatened  by the Israeli army and/or Jewish settlers.  Teargas, which is very debilitating, was often used against protestors and journalists covering the event.  The threat of violence was real.  In 2008, Terje was shot by soldiers.  The bullet turned out to be a rubber-coated steel bullet, and luckily it did little physical damage, but it did affect him psychologically.  It reminded him of the dangers that protestors must endure.
After one year of filming Carlsson almost gave up on the project.  He had hundreds of thousands of hours footage, but it was overwhelming, and he didn’t yet have a story narrative for the film.   Then an unlikely event provided a source of inspiration.
In August 2009, Terje was working for Swedish Radio about a story on where he revealed how the well-established Greek-Orthodox Zionist population despised the more recently arrived evangelists in the Gaza Strip.  The Christian Zionists became vocal critics.  They tried to label him “Pro-Palestinian” in their publications.  They harassed his producers, and published misinformation all over the Internet.  The smear campaign worked very well – to inspire him.  He realized that he was needed to work and report on the news and events that were occurring in the Middle East.  Thanks to these fanatics, Carlsson became more motivated and inspired to tell this story.  He continued to join Ronny Perlman at the Qalandyia checkpoint on Sundays at 4 a.m.  He continued to go to the anti-wall protests, despite the large amount of teargas Israeli soldiers always shoot.  He continued to travel to Hebron and the Olive fields in the West Bank.
In late 2009, Terje Carlsson started post production work on the film.  Together with co-editor, Josef Nyberg, he was able to find the correct narrative and structure for this award winning film.  All the activists shown in the documentary have seen Israel vs. Israel have seen the film and like it very much.  They have supported the release and attended screenings – including showings in both Jerusalem and East Jerusalem.
BIOGRAPHIES

FILMMAKER

Mr. Terje Carlsson is a freelance journalist based for many years in Jerusalem, working mostly for Swedish National Radio and Television. Terje has during last decade produced shorter documentaries and features from ex-Yugoslavia, South Africa and different parts of the Middle East.  In 2008, his first feature documentary Welcome to Hebron was released. The film won several awards at festivals all over the world, including the Med Film Festival in Marseille. TV-broadcasters from more than 10 countries all over the world bought the rights for broadcast.  Israel vs Israel is his second feature documentary from the Middle East. The film will have its world premiere on SVT (Swedish National Television) in September 2010.

Everybody is going to die one day. Oskar, 70, is going to die in 6 days. He is now ready to forgive his brother for a disagreement years ago. Will he reach his brother, who he believes live on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, before it’s too late?

LA LUNA is the timeless fable of a young boy who is coming of age in the most peculiar of circumstances. Tonight is the very first time his Papa and Grandpa are taking him to work. In an old wooden boat they row far out to sea, and with no land in sight, they stop and wait. A big surprise awaits the little boy as he discovers his family’s most unusual line of work. Should he follow the example of his Papa, or his Grandpa? Will he be able to find his own way in the midst of their conflicting opinions and timeworn traditions?

Director’s Biography: Enrico Casarosa joined Pixar Animation Studios in January 2002. He began working as a story artist on “Cars” and the Academy Award-winning feature “Ratatouille.” Casarosa’s next project was as story artist on Disney·Pixar’s Academy Award®- winning feature film, “Up.” Most recently, Casarosa made his directing debut with the short film, LA LUNA.   Currently, Casarosa is working as head of story on an upcoming Pixar film.

TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM

Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins.  Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins.

A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan’s most beloved flower.

SYNOPSIS:

In 1994, scientist Victor DeNoble became the first whistleblower to reveal the tobacco industry’s efforts to manufacture “a maximally addictive” product.  Tasked in the 1980s by a major tobacco company to invent a safer form of nicotine — one that would decrease the danger of heart failure while remaining just as addictive (so smokers could live, and smoke, longer) — DeNoble succeeded.  But, in doing so, he inadvertently created indisputable evidence that nicotine was addictive, something the tobacco companies had long denied.  His position was terminated, his lab was closed, and both his research and the “safer cigarette” were buried in the vaults and kept from the public…until he broke his confidentiality agreement and became the ultimate whistleblower.

ADDICTION INCORPORATED, Charles Evans Jr.’s taut, journalistic exposé made over the course of 15 years, tells the riveting story of DeNoble’s journey from research scientist to star informant.  After testifying before Congressional committees, the FDA and Al Gore’s Tobacco Settlement Committee, DeNoble has become America’s peripatetic anti-smoking advoMONDcate par excellence. Evans marshals classic footage including that of the CEOs of the seven leading tobacco companies testifying under oath that they do not believe that nicotine is addictive; Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-VA) likening the government’s treatment of the tobacco industry to McCarthyism; and, highlights of the $10 billion lawsuit filed by Philip Morris against the ABC television network.

Today, the story continues to unfold as provisions of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act begin to go into effect, empowering the FDA to require that cigarette packages display disturbing photographs of rotting teeth and blackened lungs, ban sweetened cigarettes targeted to children, and prohibit “light” and “low tar” labeling by fall 2012.  The new law also allows the FDA to reduce nicotine in cigarettes to near nil, a prospect that could put big tobacco out of business. With new restrictions fast approaching, the tobacco companies are rolling up their sleeves and arming themselves for litigation — again.

If you think you know everything there is to know about cigarettes and nicotine, ADDICTION INCORPORATED will startle you with its vital, previously undisclosed information.  Straight from the mouths of the key players behind the scenes (interviewees include Steven C. Parrish, the former Senior VP and General Counsel for External Affairs at Philip Morris), ADDICTION INCORPORATED reveals exactly how the tobacco industry achieved behemoth power through scientific secrecy…and what their next move may be.

Addiction Incorporated opens in New York on December 14 at Film Forum and in Los Angeles on January 13 at Landmark’s Nuart  and in San Francisco n January 20.

www.addictionincorporated.com

NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS CHOICE!

Xander Berkeley, Anson Mount, and Ryan Donowho explode on the screen in this visceral tale about three generations of meth addicts living in the piney woods of East Texas. Living in a small town and amongst a house full of crystal meth abusers, seventeen year-old Abe (Donowho) wrestles to beat an addiction to meth and struggles to protect himself and his young niece from an abusive Uncle Bump (Mount). When Sonny (Berkeley) returns home from prison seeking redemption from his son, Abe, the two must navigate the treacherous waters created by Bump, who will do almost anything to maintain a dangerous lifestyle fueled by crystal meth. The tension and suspense build up to an electrifying ending where harrowing choices are made by all three men leading each of them to a different fate. Unlike any other movie, COOK COUNTY unflinchingly tells a raw and real story of rural life where crystal meth dictates the family dynamic.

CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL is a tantalizing and star-studded tribute to Roger Corman, Hollywood’s most prolific writer-director producer, and seminal influencing force in modern moviemaking over the last 60 years.  Featuring interviews with Hollywood icons and cinematic luminaries, some who launched their careers within Corman’s unforgettable world of filmmaking, including Paul W.S. Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier, Ron Howard, Eli Roth, Martin Scorsese, William Shatner and Jack Nicholson, along with many others, this documentary chronicles how Corman created his cult film empire, one low-budget success at a time, capitalizing on undiscovered talent, and pushing the boundaries of independent filmmaking.

Director Alex Stapleton weaves archival footage following Roger’s illustrious career: From his early days of genre-defining classics including the original Fast and Furious, the original Little Shop of Horrors, The Crybaby Killer, The Intruder, House of Usher, and The Wild Angels (which at that point in 1966 was his 100th film) – to present day video of him and his wife Julie on location, still at work as they continue to produce and distribute films outside the studio system: fast, cheap and out-of-this-world! Distributed by Anchor Bay Films, Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is rated R for some violent images, nudity and language. Run time 90 minutes.
Corman’s World’s: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel opens on December 16th in New York (Village East Cinema) and Los Angeles (Nuart Theater).

After years of interviewing top professionals and discovering their keys to success, Gordon became a certified master practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a time tested and proven method for creating positive change, building confidence, achieving success and self-improvement in any area of life. The aim is to help people find clarity, to shift thinking from problems to possibilities, so that they can move forward towards a more fulfilling life.

Certifications
Hypnotism Training Institute of Los Angeles
Certified Life Coach
Certified NLP Master Practitioner
Certified Motivational Coach
Certified Social and Emotional Intelligence Coach

Other dads featured in the film include skater Tony Hawk, Art Alexakis (Everclear), Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Tony Adolescent (The Adolescents), Fat Mike (NOFX), Lars Frederiksen (Rancid), and many others.

CONSTANCE MARKS (Director, Producer)

Constance Marks is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. She is the founder and president of Constance Marks Productions, Inc., a documentary production company based in New York City. Marks began her filmmaking career over 30 years ago as an assistant editor for the renowned Cinema Verite pioneers, David and Albert Maysles.

Marks’ critically acclaimed films have been shown theatrically, broadcast widely, and garnered numerous awards. Her productions include Return to Appalachia which aired on PBS, Let’s Fall in Love: A Singles Weekend at the Concord Hotel. which was selected by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as one of the outstanding documentaries of the year, and Green Chimneys – a full-length documentary feature film which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO. Marks has produced numerous films focusing on important social issues including homelessness, the elderly, experimental charter schools and substance abuse recovery residences.

Green Chimneys is available on Amazon and Netflix.

Based on the memoir by Louis Sarno (“Last Thoughts Before Vanishing from the Face of the Earth”), OKA! is a fish-out-of-water tale of a ethnomusicologist from New Jersey who finds himself immersed in the colorful lives ofthe Bayake pygmies.Based on the memoir by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno, who has lived with the pygmies for over 20 years, OKA! transports audiences to the vast forest of the Central African Republic into the magical world of the Bayaka and lyrically captures their music, dance, humor and exuberance, as well as the harsh realities they endure.

The forest dwelling tribe of Bayaka pygmies is famed for its acute hearing (‘Oka!’ means ‘listen!” in their Akka language).When the tribe’s revered leader hears a menacing new sound in the forest, his super-sensory powers send a message to “Big Ear,” his ethnomusicologist friend Larry Whitman (Kris Marshall, Love Actually), from his sickbed in New Jersey.Against doctor’s orders, Larry travels to his friends in Central Africa to help them battle Mayor Bassoun (Isaach de Bankolé,The Limits of Control), a powerful local politician who is helping Mr. Yi (Will Yun Lee, Die Another Day), a developer with a logging company intent on destroying the Bayaka’s forest home.

Refusing to give in, Larry and the pygmies humorously concoct a series of obstacles to try to prevent the loggers, all while continuing to enjoy their colorful way of life with music and dance inspired by the beauty of the African forest, its animals and magical spirits.

Written by Louis Sarno & Lavinia Currier and Suzanne Stroh, OKA! is directed by Lavinia Currier and produced by James Bruce and Lavinia Currier.Conrad W. Hall is director of photography and music is by Chris Berry and the musicians of Yandombe.An official selection of the 2010 Telluride Film Festival, OKA! is filmed mainly in the Dzanga Sangha Protected Reserve in southwest Central African Republic.

Filmed over twenty years by acclaimed documentarian Jennifer Fox (FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN), MY REINCARNATION chronicles the epic story of the high Tibetan Buddhist Master, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, and his western-born son, Yeshi. The film follows Namkhai Norbu’s rise to greatness as a Buddhist teacher in the West, while his son, Yeshi, recognized at birth as the reincarnation of a famous spiritual master, breaks away from his father’s tradition to embrace the modern world. Can the father convince his son to keep the family’s threatened spiritual legacy alive? Never before has a high Tibetan Master allowed such complete access to his private life and it is doubtful that another ever will. With her signature intimate entry to both family and icons including the Dalai Lama, Fox expertly distills a decades-long drama into a universal story about love, transformation, and destiny.

Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning filmmaker known for her ground-breaking documentary features and series, including BEIRUT THE LAST HOME MOVIE, AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY, FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN and now MY REINCARNATION. She has executive produced many films, including LOVE & DIANE, ON THE ROPES, and UPSTATE. She is currently preparing a new fiction feature, THE HORSE’S TALE, and a television series, THE GOOD EGG. Fox is the subject of three films about filmmaking: TO HECK WITH HOLLIWOOD!, CINEMA VERITE: DEFINING THE MOMENT and CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY.

ABOUT THE FILM
The desolate and surreal Salton Sea in California stands as a formidable metaphor for the broken American dream. The largest lake in California, it was created when the Colorado River flooded the windswept desert, carrying the river’s entire volume into the Salton Sink over a period of approximately two years. A dam was built and water filled the basin—the Salton Sea was born.

At the height of American optimism in the 1950s, the Salton Sea fueled a recreation boom, and the inland desert sea became an inviting vacation destination, catering to water skiers, boaters and fishermen. Billed as “Palm Springs-by-the-Sea” and “the new Riviera,” the lake enjoyed immense popularity, especially among the rich and famous, as movie stars and recording artists flocked to the area. From Dean Martin to Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys, the lake became a speedboat playground. Restaurants, shops, and nightclubs sprang up along the sea, and on the eastern shore a new little resort town came to life under the name Bombay Beach.

Today, after a series of floods, the lack of water outflow, and the high salinity that has killed off the fish, Bombay Beach is little more than a shanty ghost town in the poorest county of California. The broken-down signs from the ‘50s and the sunken, ghostly Marina are still there to remind the community of the dream that once was the Salton Sea—and is now a pool of dead fish in the middle of the desert.

Director Alma Har’el tells the story of three protagonists. The trials of Benny Parrish, a young boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder whose troubled soul and vivid imagination create both suffering and joy for him and his complex and loving family. The story of CeeJay Thompson, a black teenager and aspiring football player who has taken refuge in Bombay Beach hoping to avoid the same fate of his cousin who was murdered by a gang of youths in Los Angeles; and that of Red, an ancient survivor, once an oil field worker, living on the fumes of whiskey, cigarettes and an irrepressible love of life.

Together these portraits form a triptych of manhood in its various ages and guises, in a gently hypnotic style that questions whether they are a product of their world or if their world is a construct of their own imaginations. The narratives are interspersed with choreographed sequences in which the protagonists dance — to music specially composed for the film by Zach Condon of the band Beirut and songs by Bob Dylan.

Aaron Schock’s acclaimed film, which has appeared at many world festivals and is the most recent winner of the Jury Award at the Hampton’s International Film Festival, is one of the most compelling documentaries seen in years. Set in the cinematically rich milieu of a century-old traveling circus in rural Mexico, CIRCO follows the family-run “Circo Mexico” as they struggle to stay together despite mounting debt, dwindling audiences, and a simmering family conflict.

The hardscrabble founders, the Ponce family, have lived and performed on the back roads of Mexico since the 19th century. Tino, the ringmaster, is driven by his dream to lead his parents’ circus to greater success. He corrals the energy of his whole family, including his parents, his brother and his four young children, towards this singular goal. But his wife Ivonne is determined to make a change. Feeling exploited by her in-laws, she longs to return her kids to a childhood lost to laboring in the circus.

Through an intricately woven story of a marriage in trouble and of a century-old family tradition that hangs in the balance, CIRCO asks: To whom and to what should we ultimately owe our allegiances?

Gorgeously filmed along the back roads of rural Mexico, CIRCO is a road movie that opens the viewer to the luminous world of a traveling circus while examining the universal themes of family bonds, filial responsibility, and the weight of cultural inheritance.

An original score by indie rockers Calexico rounds out this “gem of a documentary” (Time Out London).

Aaron Schock (Director / Producer / Cinematographer / Writer) is a Columbia University graduate and worked for several years in non-profit community development in New York City before moving into filmmaking. CIRCO is his first feature.

Tune in Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 7:00 PM (PST) on Center Stage with Mark Gordon. Listen “live” on 88.9 FM and at www.kxlu.com

Genetic engineering of food crops is as controversial today as ever, as many of the large corporations that use this technology position themselves as the answer to the world food crisis and further consolidate the seed supply. The Future of Food continues to be a key tool used by activists and educators who call for increased attention to this issue.

The Future of Food has been a key tool in the American and international anti-GMO grassroots activist movements and played widely in the environmental and activist circuits since its release in 2004. The film is widely acknowledged for its role in educating voters and the subsequent success of passing Measure H in Mendocino County, California, one of the first local initiatives in the country to ban the planting of GMO crops. Indicative of its popularity, “The Future of Food” showed to a sold out audience of 1,500 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in 2004, a benefit for Slow Food, where it was introduced by Alice Waters.

About Deborah Koons Garcia
Deborah Koons Garcia fell in love with filmmaking when she first picked up a Bolex while a student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1970. She went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her educational series All About Babies, narrated by Jane Alexander, won a Cine Golden Eagle and a Gold Medal from the John Muir Medical Film Festival, among other awards. Her feature film, Poco Loco, “finds its groove in gentle romantic fantasy” according to Variety, and won awards at the Philadelphia, Rivertown and Orlando Film Festivals. She was the instigator and chief Creative Consultant for Grateful Dawg, a documentary about the musical friendship between her husband Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. Grateful Dawg premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to a lively run in film festivals, in theaters and on television. The Future of Food was shown over a dozen times as a work in progress in Mendocino County, California before the March 2004 election and was the primary element in passing Measure H which bans the planting of genetically engineered crops in the county. It is the first time U.S. citizens have voted on this very important issue. All the people who worked on The Future of Food are proud that our efforts have had a real impact in the real world.

Over the past 50 years, large corporations have consolidated and now control virtually all animal agriculture-and independent farmers and ranchers are struggling to compete in the marketplace.

The broiler industry has changed drastically over the last 50 years and now produces more than 8 billion birds — an increase of more than 1400% — despite the loss of 98% of broiler operations over the last 50 years. The typical broiler chicken comes from a facility that produces more than 605,000 birds a year. The majority of these massive operations — millions of chickens and the billions of pounds of waste they produce — are concentrated in a handful of states that comprise the American Broiler Belt. For more information, please visit www.pewenvironment.org/BigChicken

Farming is not what it used to be. Over the past 50 years, large corporations have consolidated and now control virtually all animal agriculture-and independent farmers and ranchers are struggling to compete in the marketplace.

Congress enacted a measure in 2008 directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to address this growing unfairness, and last year the department moved forward with a proposed regulation known as the GIPSA rule (for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, which would implement it). After accepting more than 60,000 comments, including support from the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union and independent farmers from around the country, that proposed regulation is now in danger.

As early as this week, the U.S. Senate will consider a measure (already passed in the House) that would prevent the GIPSA rule from moving forward.

About Robert Martin
Robert Martin joined the Pew Environment Group in 2009 as a senior officer working to reduce health issues related to the poor conditions on industrial farms.

Martin has more than 30 years of experience in public policy and politics at the federal and state levels. Before joining Pew, he was executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, leading its two-year study, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, which was funded by Pew through a grant to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Previously, he worked for South Dakota Sens. George McGovern, Jim Abourezk, Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson. He also served on the staff of Rep. Dan Glickman of Kansas and for members of the Kansas Senate Democratic Caucus. Martin began his career as a general assignment newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania and went on to work for the Kansas Farmers Union.

Martin holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of South Dakota.

Better This World tells a provocative and cautionary story about the shifting fault lines of civil liberties, protest and government vigilance. Two boyhood friends from the heart of Texas, Bradley Crowder and David McKay, find themselves increasingly out of step with their neighbors as they react against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After moving to Austin, they go to a presentation at a local bookstore about protesting the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Minneapolis-St. Paul. There they are approached by a charismatic older activist, who suggests that they work together to prepare for the demonstrations.

Six months later, on the eve of the convention, the two young friends make eight Molotov cocktails but then decide not to use them. The matter might have ended there – but not everything was as it seemed. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies had been engaged in a two-year, multimillion-dollar counterterrorism effort leading up to the convention. The young men’s mentor, it turns out, was a government informant and had been long before meeting them; Crowder and McKay were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism.

ART & COPY is a powerful film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Jeff Goody, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” “Think Different,” and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.

The film is produced by The One Club which is globally the largest non-profit organization for the recognition and promotion of excellence in advertising. Founded in 1975 and based in New York City, The One Club produces four annual awards competitions: The One Show, One Show Design, One Show Interactive and One Show Entertainment which culminate in awards ceremonies held in New York City & Los Angeles each Spring. The organization also nurtures emerging talent through scholarships, portfolio reviews, an annual student exhibition and a new initiative called The One Club–Adversity established to promote multiculturalism and diversity in creative media industries. The One Club maintains a full-time exhibition gallery, hosts an ongoing series of lectures and events, and produces publications that include the quarterly One, a magazine and the One Show, One Show Design and One Show Interactive annuals.

ART & COPY premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It was released theatrically in August, 2009, and premiered on PBS in October, 2011. The News & Documentary Awards will take place in New York on September 26, 2011.